question about organ donation

[Basilisa Marie]

I'm actually really confused about the Church teaching now... can someone inform me? I mean - removing hydration is wrong and hydration is seen as "ordinary" not "extraordinary" means though the person would die without it. So how does that compare to something like a machine that helps to breathe? I keep reading different things everywhere... maybe I should ask my priest.. I tend to think it's good to just let "brain dead" people die naturally because God decides when we die

​Hydration and nutrition are certainly ordinary means of care, unless your circumstances would turn it into an extraordinary means. It's theoretically possible to refuse an IV if you're still capable of swallowing food/liquid, as long as your intent isn't to starve/dehydrate yourself to death. Most of the time, food and water are considered ordinary care. But if you're receiving it through extra-ordinary means, like a tube or an IV, the line starts to get a bit blurrier (though again, in most cases in a place like the US our usual standard of care is pretty high, so it would almost always count as ordinary care). Stuff like food, water, shelter, warmth, companionship, those are the things that are part of ordinary care. A machine that keeps your heart beating or your lungs breathing, on the other hand, is extra-ordinary care. Chemotherapy is extra-ordinary care. Dialysis is extra-ordinary care. Keeping people alive with machines when they're in a coma is extra-ordinary care. 

Like others have said, we have these core ideas about what counts as ordinary vs. extra-ordinary care, but when you start applying those you quickly see that almost every situation is unique. Plus then you can start incorporating the limits of modern medicine, all of the incredible things we can do but the fact that there are even more things that we don't know... things just get even messier. Which is probably why you're seeing a bunch of conflicting things online. There isn't always a clear-cut answer when you start talking about individual situations.